Jake Nelson walked into the office just after the big boss, a chilling man with platinum blond hair and eyes the same color as bleached stone. He did not normally call someone into his office unless it was to chew them out, or worse. Jake said nothing, only stood and waited to be addressed, which he was, shortly.
The boss sighed, and sat down behind the elegant oak desk. "Sit down, Jake," he said, indicating one of two chairs that sat in front of his desk. Jake did so. "And don't look so terrified. If you were in that much trouble, I'd have dealt with you by now."
Jake managed a bit of a sick smile, and sat as he had been bidden.
"Still, I'm not real happy with your performance thus far. Those kids escaping could have messed things up real good for us."
"Well jeez, they're just kids," Jake said. "Who coulda thought they'd find a way out of that stupid basement? And without being heard by one of us? We even made sure there was someone there all the time."
"Didn't do a whole lot of good."
Jake sighed. "No, I guess not. It was storming pretty bad by that point. Guess that's why we didn't hear." He looked at the boss, whose expression was not readable.
"You're just lucky that our man in the police station was able to stall things enough to help you get out of there. He's doing everything he can to gum up the works. Everything he can do without being caught, that is."
"Well, that's good, I guess," said Jake, feeling resentful that someone else had to cover his rear because of his mistake. "Anyways. What're we gonna do with the little bastards?"
"That depends," said the boss. "If we manage to get out of here free and clear, we'll do as I had you tell Hardy. We'll tie them up someplace and leave directions to their location, and we'll be shut of them. If not, we will take them with us as leverage. Once we get out of the jurisdiction of the US, we'll see. Likely we'll just kill them and be done with it, no chance of them escaping, no chance of them causing us problems. They may be children, but they're Hardys, and they're clever. Still, we might find a certain use for them. There's countries that still deal in the sale of human beings, might look into that. Either way, we'll be rid of them."
Jake frowned. "How much you think they know about the operation? I mean I didn't think they'd learned much, but -"
"But you screwed up from the beginning," the boss cut in candidly. "Well, we know for sure that they know what you three look like." The boss shrugged, and stood. "So ask them. Get Jesse on it, she's a woman, they might warm up to her."
Jake also stood, and gave the boss a look. "Don't let her hear you say that," he said with a snort. "She's not exactly the motherly sort.
Unperturbed by this statement, the blond man said, "Do it yourself then, I don't care. Just find out what they know, and report to me. They should have a guard on them anyway. In the meantime, you and whoever's not guarding the cell block working on getting us ready to move out."
Jake nodded. "Yes sir," he said heading out. Then he paused, and looked back. "How long will we need to get everything finalized, you know, get our business finished, money collected, all that?"
The boss thought a moment. "A week, I'd say. That's IF you get yourselves moving."
Jake took the hint and left the office.
On the shoreline, there was a mild bit of chaos at the boat rental shop, where Fenton was yelling desperately into his cell phone. A few people had come to see, and looked at him a bit bewildered. A young rookie cop, name of Con Riley, stepped tentatively up to him and spoke. "Mr. Hardy?" he asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Are you oka-"
Fenton jerked his arm away from the young officer, clamping a hand over his free ear. But a moment later he took the phone from his ear, jamming his thumb on the END button hard enough to nearly crack the plastic. "Those miserable pieces of..." he growled in a low tone. He might have finished with a four-letter word or two, but he could not think of one vile enough to describe the man that he had heard beating his child.
Con Riley blinked, looking a little abashed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hardy, I didn't mean to intrude or anything."
Fenton closed his eyes and tried very hard to get a reign on his temper. It did not easily, but when it did, anyone around him was best off staying back a few paces. Luckily, he did not blow his top. Calm, he told himself, although everything in him that made him a parent wanted to lash out at anyone, to exact some kind of payment for his son getting hurt. But that would get him nowhere, indeed it might even get him thrown off the case, and that was not something that would sit well with him.
"I'm all right," he said tersely. He looked up to see that behind the rookie stood a few other officers, the detective that had come to help set up the tracer on his phone, and Chief Collig. Ezra Collig did not usually personally oversee such investigations, but Fenton was an old friend. Perhaps they did not always see eye to eye, but Collig wouldn't let him deal with this by himself. "That was the kidnappers," he said, but did not elaborate.
Chief Collig nodded. "Are they okay?"
"They're alive," said Fenton. He had hardly been at the shore a minute before he had gotten the call. And now, without a word, he continued his investigation. He was lifting fingerprints, making casts of footprints (where the rain had not washed them away and the ground was solid enough) and taking pictures of anything of significance.
Collig looked like he wanted to say something, but instead he simply clapped Fenton on the back and went back to his own duties. He knew it was highly unusual for Fenton to lose his temper, but then he was a parent whose children were in danger. He supposed that even someone as normally self-composed as Fenton would blow his top. He also knew that Fenton had had little sleep, little food, and a lot of caffeine. He would have to talk to him about his ability to function in this state of being.
But later.
Frank's sandals, one nearby, the other closer to the actual shore, were found, and had Fenton not just heard his sons over the phone, that might have worried him. One sandal was missing a buckle, so that might explain why he wasn't wearing them. A rock with a bit of blood on it was found as well, and Fenton hoped that the tests would not indicate that the blood was one of his sons'.
Several minutes later, Fenton found the ghost of a tire track on the asphalt, and knelt to discover it. "Ezra!" he called. "Found something!" Now this was something that could be of use in finding his boys! In fact, with that and the partial location they had managed to get from the last trace, they should be able to locate the building!
The place was deserted by the time Fenton and the police got there. Fenton felt like he might cry himself, from frustration, as he got out of his car and looked dismally around. "Blast it," he muttered, sighing and running a hand through his hair.
They were not long gone, by the looks of things. The tire tracks were fresh in the cobbles, although they led to a paved road far too soon for them to be of much use beyond a possible ID of the vehicle. The car that had been abandoned was still warm, if slightly, but had been stripped of just about anything that could be used for identification of the owners. They did find Frank and Joe's backpacks in there, and they were taken in by the cops in case there was any clue to the identity of the boys' kidnappers. The couch inside was a little damp and muddy, as was the floor. A search of the basement found nothing except the ladder Frank had stuck through the window, and flakes of paint and caulking from the window frame.
The place was examined with the same thoroughness as the previous scene, but Fenton was beginning to despair that he would ever see his boys again. He was sure they were still alive, as the kidnappers would have very little reason to kill them yet, but Fenton still worried, especially after he'd heard them hurting Joe.
He walked outside, his eyes closed, and his hands on his head. Gods, he needed to get it together! He was of no use like this! But three nights of sleeplessness, worry, and hardly anything to eat had taken its toll on him. His normally keen instincts, sharp eye, and clear mind were badly dulled. He leaned against his car, looking miserable.
Chief Collig approached him. "We'll find them, Fenton," he said in a low tone.
"I don't know, Ezra," said Fenton, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. Panicking wasn't going to help anything. "Whoever these guys are, they're good."
"They're still human, and humans make mistakes."
"I suppose." Fenton Hardy did not sound all that convinced.
Collig sighed. "Look, you've hardly had any sleep. Maybe you should go home and get some rest, let us handle it for a little while."
Fenton frowned; it sounded like a very wise and a very tempting idea, but he couldn't stand the thought of doing nothing while his sons were out there, possibly hurt. He told Collig this, and at his questioning look, he explained what he had heard over the phone. "I-I don't know how badly they hurt him," Fenton said. "But -" He broke off, his hands shaking, and looked to the sky. If he ever got his hands on those miserable cowards...
Even Collig looked outraged at this, and expressed his feelings with a few colorful words. He looked at a loss as to what to say to Fenton, but after a moment, grasped his shoulder until the detective looked at him. "Come on, Fenton," he said. "Let's go back to your place and talk this thing out, your case, everything we've learned since then, everything. You're exhausted, and you're not gonna be able to do much good here. Hate to sound like a jerk, but I'm afraid it's true. But I've found that sometimes a good brainstorm can be highly useful for catching things that you wouldn't have thought of before."
Fenton looked like he wanted to argue, but finally gave in, suddenly feeling tired down to his bones. "Okay, Collig," he said in a defeated sort of tone. "Okay, you win; I'll meet you at my place, then."
Collig nodded. "I will meet you there. Detective Berkley!"
The man that had set up Fenton's phone looked up from where he was examining some of the tire tracks in the mud. "Yeah, Chief?"
"You're in charge! Report to me immediately if you and your team find anything."
The man nodded, smiling a bit. "Gotya, chief."
"Okay, Hardy, let's go figure this crap out."
Fenton nodded, and went around to the driver's side of his car, and paused. "Hey, Chief!" he called. Collig looked back. "Thanks." Collig smiled, gave a sort of half wave, and continued to his own vehicle.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, both men were seated at the dinner table in the Hardy's kitchen. Laura was there with them, listening to what happened. She went pale when Fenton told her of the phone call. "My God," she said. "I wish I'd kept him on the line longer, you could have gotten a trace!"
Fenton shook his head. "It's all right, Laura," he said. "We ended up finding the place, anyway. The trace would have done little good at this point." That wasn't entirely true. There was the chance that having the exact location from the beginning would have gotten there in time to catch the kidnappers. The last conversation that Fenton had been allowed with his boys had been just long enough to get a partial trace, the general location, but that was as close as they got. Still, he knew that would only upset his wife, and so he said nothing of it.
"Well," Collig said, "we're hoping that this little pow-wow will give us some new ideas." He turned to Fenton. "Okay, let's go over everything that you know about your current case. We'll start with that."
Fenton, a cup of coffee in front of him and clad now in dry clothes, took a big breath and began. The case. His client was a man from Bayport, whose brother had been killed by a gunshot wound to the head; Fenton had been hired to find the killer. The gun had proven untraceable, there had been no fingerprints or other evidence at the crime scene, and no marks on the body, save for the bullethole in his head. The autopsy had turned up no trace of chemicals from drugs in his body. "The murder itself was a bit of a dead end," said Fenton. "Like I said, whoever did it was good. But then I got to questioning the victim's friends and family. Most were eager enough to help, as they wanted to nail the man's killer as much or more than I did. It was then I started getting little patches of information."
The victim had worked in a restaurant as a cook, and so there was little chance that such a professional murder had anything to do with that, but he had questioned his co-workers and boss anyway. Surprisingly, he had found out a few things there. The victim's best friend worked there as dishwasher, and told Fenton that the victim had been helping their manager figure out who was doing drugs among the work crew. The place had very nearly gotten shut down because of some residue found in the unisex employees' bathroom that ended up being from cocaine. The friend said the boss didn't give a crap if some moron wanted to ruin his life with drugs, but when he took it into the workplace, that was unacceptable. Whoever it was had not been found out for certain, but very soon after the health inspection that had found the residue, three employees quit; one cook and two servers. Upon some intense investigation, Fenton discovered that it had been the cook was the one doing drugs on shift, and that he was not only a user, but a dealer. A dealer with some major connections.
All through this investigation, Fenton had been getting threats, the threats he had told Sam Radley about on the phone while Joe eavesdropped. It was shortly after he had found out about the drug dealer, and that he was only the low man on an as of yet unnamed totem pole, that Frank and Joe had been kidnapped.
"I'm onto something big," said Fenton. "I feel it in my gut. There's something big going on here, and these guys are pros. The only sloppy ones seem to be the lowest underlings, and even they aren't careless for long." Fenton's voice was grim as he said this.
Collig nodded. "I know about that," he said. The drug dealer Fenton had investigated had been killed, and Fenton was willing to bet that he had been killed for his carelessness. After all, he had given Fenton and the police the lead that could break the case, eventually. But then Fenton's sons had been kidnapped, and everything was thrown into chaos.
There was silence at the table for several minutes, and then Laura spoke up. "This drug dealer, the cook..." she said to the men, who turned to her to listen. "You have his body?"
Chief Collig nodded. "Yeah, it's down at the morgue."
She frowned. "He was searched thoroughly?"
Collig frowned. "Yes, everything on him is in Evidence. Why?"
"Well, I thought perhaps that solving his murder would provide the lead you need to find who he worked for. After all, if Fenton's right, someone that he worked for killed him, or had him killed. If you could identify that man... Either that, or search the man's home or car, see if he left any clues."
Collig and Fenton looked at each other, and Fenton raised a brow. "You know," he said after a moment. "I've been focused so intently on the original victim's murder, I never really considered trying to solve this one...Laura, you're a genius!"
The woman smiled tiredly. "I know," she teased a bit. "That's why you married me."
"Absolutely!" Fenton went over and kissed her. "Chief, you say the body's still at the morgue? Can I have a look at it, and anything else he had on him?"
The chief stood. "Yeah, I think I can arrange that. Meanwhile, Fenton, I want you to get some sleep." When the man began to protest, Chief Collig held up a hand. "No, Fenton, I insist. These guys are pros, like you said, I don't want you going after them with your brain half addled with fatigue. I'll see what I can find out about the drug dealer, and Detective Berkley will be investigating the boys' kidnapping. You've been at this almost constantly for the last four days. Rest. Tomorrow, come into the station, and I'll tell you what we've got on the drugger, and you can go from there."
"He's right, Fenton," said Laura. Not teasing anymore, she stood and looked worriedly at Fenton. "You need some good sleep, and some good food. And tomorrow you'll be fresh and alert, and ready to crack this case. Okay?"
Fenton blew his breath out through clenched teeth, but he knew that they were right. "Okay," he finally said. He turned and shook the chief's hand. "Good luck, okay? And if you find out anything about my boys, call me, whether I'm asleep or not."
Collig nodded. "I will do that. Until tomorrow then, Fenton. And Mrs. Hardy, thanks for the coffee."
She smiled as the chief left, then turned on her husband. "And you, mister, you get to bed and take a nap. I've got chamomile if you need an assist. I'll wake you for supper, all right?"
Fenton was reminded again how much he loved his wife. He walked over and folded her into his embrace, his face against her neck. She hugged him back, closing her eyes. "Fenton...I know you'll find them. I just...I don't want you to work yourself into a collapse. That won't do anyone any good, and I don't have to worry about three family members."
"I know, Laura."
Laura Hardy pulled away and smiled a bit at her husband. "Go on."
Fenton kissed her once before trudging upstairs. Turned out he did not need any help falling asleep. As soon as he had changed into his comfortable pajamas, he found that he could not possibly stay awake any longer. And now that there was a break in the frustrating case, his mind was a bit more at ease. I really was pushing myself, he thought as he drifted off. But tomorrow...tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow it's time to get serious. And with that thought, he surrendered to slumber.